Council considers Web casting
If Spokane Valley residents won’t come to City Hall, Councilman Bill Gothmann would like to take it to them – either on cable television or in cyberspace.
That way, council members could share the good times.
Late last year, when the lead consultant on the city’s Sprague-Appleway corridor plan delivered a “stirring presentation” to the council, “the only people who heard were the people in this room,” Gothmann told his colleagues recently.
“I thought, ‘What an absolute shame,’ ” he said.
After all, the city has spent more than a half-million dollars on the plan, which will have far-reaching effects on residents if adopted.
OK, the Spokane Valley council may never be a top draw on YouTube, but Gothmann said more than 100 million videos are downloaded daily from the popular Web site.
“That’s the direction our society is going,” he said.
“This is the information age,” Councilwoman Rose Dempsey agreed. “It behooves us at least to find out how much it would cost.”
Council members want constituents to know what the city is doing, and constituents expect to be told, Dempsey said.
The council reaction was mixed, however, when Gothmann presented his proposal Jan. 15.
Members agreed to ask city employees to study the cost of presenting council meetings and other city programming on the Internet. The study is to be done as time is available.
Some council members had reservations about the cost and the possibility that they and others would be tempted to posture for their electronic audience.
“I would not agree that it is a priority at the moment,” said Councilman Gary Schimmels, who helped Gothmann put the issue on the agenda for discussion purposes.
Schimmels said he was concerned, in equal measures, about the cost and the effect on behavior.
Gothmann found a wide range of costs in other cities – from less than $20,000 a year for Web casting to more than $100,000 for telecasting, which is sometimes paid with fees from cable television franchisees.
Councilman Steve Taylor said he thought Spokane Valley has some of the best council meetings in the state by avoiding others’ mistakes – including televised coverage in which “everyone is posturing” and “everything that’s said is political and playing to the cameras.”
Still, he said, officials should make sure the new City Hall they plan to build has built-in capability to broadcast meetings in case future council members don’t share his reluctance.
Mayor Richard Munson had concerns about costs and whether the city’s computer server could handle the strain of Web casting, but a week later he saw an example of how it might benefit the city.
“We need to be more aggressive about getting the word out,” Munson said when council members discussed a projected revenue shortfall of at least $2 million a year for street maintenance.
Municipal telecasts or Web casts could help city officials make their case for more money, the mayor said.
Gothmann got fired up about improving communication with citizens when he learned at a National League of Cities seminar several months ago that many, if not most, American cities already get the word out electronically.
Later, he learned Spokane Valley, population 88,280, is the largest city in Washington that doesn’t broadcast municipal business. Of 34 Washington cities with populations of 30,000 or more, 28 present their city council meetings on television or the Internet, Gothmann said.
He surveyed the cities that broadcast their council meetings, and a clear pattern emerged among 18 responses he had received last week. Council members and other city officials saw some grandstanding by colleagues and constituents, but it faded over time, and they all thought the benefits outweighed the problems.
Elected officials around the state also frequently commented that they were surprised by the number of contacts from people who had seen them on city cable television channels.
Several, including Auburn City Councilwoman Sue Singer, said cameras have made them more careful about their speech. Singer thinks broadcasts are “an important service,” but they have made discussions “less open” by burying council disagreements in untelevised committee meetings.
And, yes, there is some posturing, Singer said.
“We have one council member who likes to speak to ‘his constituents,’ looking directly into the camera to explain something in detail to his audience,” Singer said. “This, frankly, annoys the rest of us who are trying to get down to business.”
Council members on the losing side of a debate or in the run-up to an election are the worst offenders, officials in other cities said.
Playing to the camera may not be the best political strategy, anyway. In Burien, Mayor Joan McGilton said, “The council member who was most pleased to be televised was not re-elected.”
In a couple of cities, officials felt cameras helped make their council meetings more formal and focused. However, several said hidden or unobtrusive cameras are quickly forgotten.
“We hardly notice the fact of telecasting in our debates,” Spokane City Council President Joe Shogan said.
Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma said public comments are allowed only before the council gets down to business as means of discouraging “season ticket holders” who come to every meeting and talk about everything “just to get camera time.”
Despite the glowing testimonials, Spokane Valley Councilman Dick Denenny said he remains “very concerned” that televised meetings would detract from the “synergy” council members have developed.
“It’s almost contradictory,” he acknowledged, to balk at televising meetings while “constantly saying we’ve got to bring the public in.”
But Denenny supports Web casting as a compromise.
“The Web casting, I actually am very much for,” he said. “I don’t think people would tend to play to it as much.”
He thinks people generally are looking for specific information when they go to the Internet, not just surfing channels as they might with television.
And Web casting would be a lot cheaper.
“The bottom line is the bottom line,” Denenny told council members.